From Brant Rock, Massachusetts, Canadian inventor Reginald Fessenden broadcast a short program of violin playing, a phonograph recording, and a Bible reading via amplitude-modulated radio waves. Ships' radio operators, accustomed only to Morse code dots and dashes, heard a human voice come through their headphones for the first time, an event some historians mark as the birth of AM radio broadcasting.
Fessenden had spent years developing a way to transmit continuous waves rather than the crude spark-gap signals used for Morse code. His rotary spark-gap alternator, built with General Electric engineer Ernst Alexanderson, could produce a steady carrier wave capable of carrying sound rather than mere pulses.
Wireless operators aboard United Fruit Company ships in the Atlantic had been told in advance to listen in at a certain hour. What they heard instead of the familiar dots and dashes was Fessenden himself playing 'O Holy Night' on the violin, reading a passage from the Gospel of Luke, and playing a phonograph record — a genuinely eerie experience for men used to a silent, code-only wireless world.
The historical record on this broadcast is thinner than legend suggests; Fessenden's own account, written years later, is the primary source, and some historians question exact details or even the date. Still, the story endures as one of the founding myths of broadcast radio, predating commercial radio stations by over a decade.